his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form,
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,
And draw you into madness?"

Once more, in the next act (ii. 2), Hamlet again expresses his doubts:

"The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me."

In the Elizabethan times, too, no superstitious belief exerted a more
pernicious and baneful influence on the credulous and ignorant than the
notion that evil spirits from time to time entered into human beings,
and so completely gained a despotic control over them as to render them
perfectly helpless. Harsnet, in his "Declaration of Egregious Popish
Impostures" (1603), has exposed this gross superstition; and a
comparison of the passages in "King Lear," spoken by Edgar when feigning
madness, with those given by Harsnet, will show that Shakespeare has
accurately given the contemporary belief on the subject. Mr. Spalding
also considers that nearly all the allusions in "King Lear" refer to a
youth known as Richard Mainey, a minute account of whose supposed
possession has been given by Harsnet.

Persons so possessed were often bound and shut up in a dark room,
occasionally being forced to submit to flagellation--a treatment not
unlike that described in "Romeo and Juliet" (i. 2):

"Not mad, but bound more than a madman is;
Shut up in prison, kept without my food,
Whipp'd and tormented."

In the "Comedy of Errors" (iv. 4) we have an amusing scene, further
illustrative, probably, of the kind of treatment adopted in
Shakespeare's day:

"_Courtesan._ How say you now? is not your husband mad?

_Adriana._ His incivility confirms no less--
Good doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer;
Establish him in his true sense again,
And I will please you what you will demand.

_Luciana._ Alas, how fiery and how sharp he looks!

_Courtesan._ Mark how he trembles in his ecstasy!

_Pinch._ Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse.

_Ant. E._ There is my hand, and let it feel your ear.

_Pinch._ I charge thee, Satan, hous'd within this man,
To yield possession to my holy prayers,
And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight: